The Basics of Serenades
A serenade is a common characteristic piece of music. A characteristic piece of music is one that is written for a specific purpose or performed on a specific occasion, and has a distinctive character in terms of genre. Examples include serenades, nocturnes, lullabies, boat songs, fantasies, improvisations, caprices, rhapsodies, and so on. Most of these pieces are instrumental, but there are some genres that are both vocal and instrumental. The serenade to be mentioned here belongs to the latter.
Basic knowledge of serenade
Serenade was originally a love song sung by minstrels in front of their lovers' windows in medieval Europe, popular in Spain, Italy and other countries. It was popular in Spain, Italy and other countries. It was often accompanied by guitar, mandolin and other plucked string instruments, and the song was melodious and melodious. Later, instrumental solo serenades were also popular with vocal serenades. The serenade in the second act of Austrian composer Mozart's opera Don Juan is a typical serenade sung in front of a young girl's window playing the mandolin.
Mozart realistically reproduced the minstrel singing the serenade in this song. Don? Juan is a debauched Spanish aristocrat in the opera． He sings this serenade in front of the window of the peasant girl Zerlina, trying to seduce her with his song. The song is sung by the antagonist in the opera and contains a satirical nature. However, the tune is still beautiful and simple, with the characteristics of a folk song, accompanied by a mandolin and a stringed instrument, the plectrum. The mandolin is a pear-shaped plucked string instrument with four pairs of strings and empty strings like a violin. The song is divided into two stanzas, forming a two-part form, with each stanza followed by a short passage, and then the whole two stanzas are repeated again.
A serenade is usually a song sung at dusk or at night, but it also includes love songs sung in the morning in front of a lover's window. An example is the Austrian composer Schubert's. Listen, Listen, Skylark, is a serenade sung in the morning. It is a love song sung by Cloten to Imogen in Shakespeare's play, Cymbeline. Clotton is the son of the Queen of England, King Liebling, by her former husband, and Imogen is the daughter of the King and his former Queen. Early in the morning, Claughton brought a group of musicians to the ante-chamber connected to Imogen's boudoir, played music for her, and sang this song to impress her. Written in the form of a sectional song, the music is in two sections, the first in the key of C major. The melody is vivid and bright, describing the beautiful scenery of "the larks singing in the sky, the sun god rising"; the second section is changed from C major to A-flat major, which produces a sharp tonal contrast, and renders a magnificent color for the two lines of "charming marigolds, beginning to open their golden eyes". Magnificent colors. Singing to "how beautiful all this, my dear girl woke up", and back to C major, tonal color from dark to bright, written out the morning light urges people to return to the mood of the dream of the small building.
Another serenade written by Schubert, based on a poem by Relishtab, is a face-melting masterpiece, collected in his songbook Swan Song. The melody is light and melodious, and the accompaniment imitates the sound of a plucked string instrument, which sometimes harmonizes with the song, creating a beautiful and serene mood for the song.
French composer Gounod's serenade to Hugo's poem is also a famous piece of music that has been passed down for more than a hundred years. The melody is like a wisp of smoke, drifting in the evening breeze. The accompaniment has an up-and-down rhythm, in the style of a lullaby; and from time to time a beautiful flowing tune, echoing the song.
Instrumental serenades are also like vocal serenades in that they have a singing melody, and their accompaniment often mimics the effect of a plucked string instrument. Austrian composer Haydn's String Quartet in F major, second movement "like a march", is a typical instrumental serenade, the quartet also has the title of "serenade quartet". The String Quartet consists of two violins, a viola and a cello. The characteristic serenade style of this movement is expressed in the lyrical tone of the first violin, which sings like a human voice, accompanied by the plucked strings of the second violin, viola, and cello, which mimic the sound of a mandolin. The piece is written in sonata form. Sonata is the first movement of sonatas, symphonies, concertos and other instrumental suites in the commonly used form, is divided into three parts: the first part is the presentation of two contrasting themes, called the presentation part. In the middle of the two themes, there is a bridge passage, called the connecting part. The second theme is followed by a complementary passage, called the end. The second part of the sonata form is the part that develops the musical components of the various passages of the presentation section, called the unfolding section. The development section is structurally and tonally unstable. The third part of the sonata form is the part that repeats the presentation, called the recapitulation. But this is not a simple repetition. The most obvious change is that the two themes that appear in the main key and the dominant key respectively in the presentation section appear in the main key in the recapitulation section, thus obtaining a tonal unity. The second movement of the String Quartet in Major is in the form of a small sonata, which is close to two-part in scale. The first part is a presentation, the second a very short unfolding and a shortened recapitulation, so that the unfolding and recapitulation add up to a section that is in balance with the presentation.
The serenades mentioned above are songs and small instrumental pieces. There is also an instrumental suite. They are also called serenades because they were originally played outdoors on summer evenings. These serenades are all more relaxed and lively pieces, some played by wind instruments, some by string instruments, and some by wind and string instruments together. There is no certain number of movements, but usually more than four. Sometimes it can be as many as seven or eight movements. For example, Mozart's serenade in D major, also known as the "Haffner Serenade", there are eight movements, of which the third, fifth and seventh movements are minuets.
Czech composer Dvorak's Serenade in D minor. It is a suite for woodwinds, horns and bass strings, *** divided into four movements, depicting country wind players playing music. The first movement is a march with a humorous twist, depicting a group of funny and likeable country musicians marching down the road. to a concert. The entire movement is written in three sections. The first section is a theme in a minor key, showing the brash and simple character of the country musicians. The second section is in a major key, showing a more subtle, beautiful and affectionate feeling. The first three sections revert back to the music of the first section. The second movement is a minuet, which is the first program that the country musicians begin to play when they arrive at their destination. This movement is written in large three-part form, with each large section containing several smaller sections, a form called compound triad. The first section has the character of a "sousedushka". The sousedushka is a slow, three-beat folk dance from Bohemia. The first section contains five subsections, alternating two different themes in the order of "one, two, one, two, one". The second section is very fast and has the character of a "Furiante" dance. Furiante is a Bohemian folk dance with a fast three-beat tempo. The music is full of rhythmic variations. Although the beat of this section is also in triple time, there is a syncopated rhythm in the middle. That is, it puts the second beat in the third beat. This change in beat is characteristic of the Furiante. The second major section contains three subsections, the third of which is a varied repetition of the first. The third sub-bar is the first sub-bar's . Repetition.
Russian composer Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings is also in four movements, of which the second and fourth are presented here. The second movement is a beautiful round dance, written in compound three-part form. The first section of the music is a lyrical, singing melody that expresses a sincere and affectionate feeling. The undulating melodic line and the whirling dance rhythm are typical for a round dance. The first section is divided into three subsections. The third sub-section is a repetition of the first sub-section, but with the addition of a new flowing vocal part, which contains a skittering rhythmic pattern. The relaxed and lively music of the second bar. It is based on this rhythmic pattern. The third major section is a varied repetition of the first, with a coda added at the end, where the music fades from strong to weak.
The fourth movement is the finale written in Russian folk song themes - the finale means the last movement. The structure of this movement is sonata-like, but on a much larger scale than the second movement of Haydn's String Quartet in F major. The tempo of the introduction is that of a march, that is, a walking tempo. The theme of the introduction is the Russian folk song "Along the Meadow". Starting with the first theme, it becomes an Allegro. The first theme uses a Russian folk song, "Under the Apple Tree with Green Branches". This theme is varied three times in a row. (Variation is change repeated.) With each variation, the melody that was just played moves to a different register and a different instrument. The second theme is not really a folk song, but it does have some folk song style. The structure of the second theme is in three sections, with the first melody varying and repeating in the third section, and the second section being a continuation of the first. This is followed by an unfolding section in sonata form. In the unfolding section, the first theme is developed first, then the first theme and the second theme are combined and developed, and then the first theme is developed by imitating polyphony. The so-called imitative polyphony means that a melody is first played by one instrument, and then, at a certain distance, it is imitated by a second and a third instrument in turn. In the Presentation section, the first theme is in the key of C major and the second theme is in the key of E-flat major. By the recapitulation section, both themes are present on C major, and a finale, which complements the second theme, is added. Finally, there is the coda, a robust and powerful coda, which reproduces the theme of the introduction and the first theme, the two folk themes, with strong acoustic sequential changes, and ends the piece in a festive and generally warm atmosphere.
;